Teachers working together to improve student achievement in reading and writing

December 13, 2007

The Harry Potter Effect

Motivation, Reading Levels, and Book Selection

In general, I’m not a fan of letting kids pick books they can’t read. Letting kids struggle day after day with books two or three years above their reading level is a recipe for fatigue, frustration, and the reinforcement of bad habits. But kids often want to read books they can’t read precisely because they can’t read them. Hard books are cool books, and many kids would rather be cool than literate. So over the years, I’ve developed an approach to dealing with this situation that tries to square kids’ motivations with my instructional goals.

I was working one year with a great bunch of 3rd graders. Whatever they
may have lacked in reading skill, they more than made up for in reading
enthusiasm. In fact, it seemed not to matter at all to them that they
understood little of the books they were attempting to read. They just
liked reading.

It took me about a month to convince them that the point of reading was
to understand ideas, not just to call out words. As Halloween
approached, I felt like we were finally on solid ground: most kids had
books at their independent reading level, most were understanding what
they were reading, and some were even beginning to experiment with
phrasing and expression.

Then Harry Potter came to town.

The librarian announced a spectacular book fair jam packed with the
latest titles. The kids couldn’t wait. They saved their allowances, did
extra chores, raided piggy banks and college savings accounts. These
kids were going to buy some books!

The day after the book fair, I noticed large hard-bound volumes all
over the room. Small kids have small desks, and now they were covered
by monstrous tomes. One tiny tot couldn’t actually hold the book in his
hands to read it. He had to lay it flat instead.

Gone were the tiny transitional chapter books they’d been reading.
Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse, The Boxcar Children, all had been
disappeared by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

The kids were more excited than ever about reading. And at first, I
was, too. Then I realized something: the kids didn’t want to read their
regular books anymore, they only wanted to read Harry Potter. I didn’t
know exactly what to do. How do you tell an 8-year old who just spent
two month’s allowance on a book that he can’t read it? The answer is,
you don’t. At least not right away.

So I let the Harry Potter fans read their new books for a few days. As
I conferenced, I tried not to cringe as they mangled unfamiliar names,
tripped up on unusual vocabulary, and stumbled through sentences as
dense and tangled as fog-shrouded London streets.

I wasn’t surprised that the kids couldn’t read Harry Potter. But I was
struck by how much they wanted to read it, and how hard they were
willing to work. Several kids who had previously demonstrated reading
rates of almost 200 words per minute, were now barely reading five
pages a day. And though everyone knew the basic story, few could parse
the wonderful details lurking in almost every sentence. I had a vision
of kids reading this book for the rest of the year and understanding
only the most obvious elements. At the same time, I didn’t think I
could get away with banning Harry Potter simply on the grounds that it
was well above the kids’ reading levels. So I decided to make a deal
with Lord Voldemort.

I told the kids they would have to go back to their original books but
that they could continue to read Harry Potter for part of our reading
time each day. During “Harry Potter Time”, however, they had to promise
to use five strategies:

Word Breaking. These kids had grown out of sounding out most of their
words but now they were back in a text that required a lot of it. We
went back over several simple techniques, most involving syllable
patterns and word-within-a-word strategies, and they pledged to apply
them conscientiously to figure out all the new words they could.

Phrase Breaking. This strategy involved breaking long sentences into
many short phrases. This was the only way most kids could begin to
understand the details.

Questioning. Rather than just decoding their way through, I needed
them to start wondering about things that didn’t quite make sense. To
do this, I had to get them to actively question their reading. We
decided as a group that they would ask at least one question per
paragraph unless there was dialog which was easier to understand.

Inference. While they could ask questions, they didn’t seem to know
how to answer them. I told them this was normal and got them into
making inferences. We practiced the basic pattern of asking a question
and making an inference for the answer by putting paragraphs up on the
board, posing questions on the left side, and putting up answers on the
right. Sometimes we figured things out, sometimes we didn’t. But we
always had a better sense of the passage just by making the effort, and
this was the point I wanted to make to them.

Re-reading. To integrate the results of all the strategies they were
trying to use, I told them they had to re-read tougher spots until they
were smooth and fluent. This lowered their speed but raised the quality
of their reading to a point where I could feel confident that they were
reinforcing good habits and not developing bad ones.

If it sounds like I gave them a lot of hard work to do, that’s because
I did. Initially, I thought they wouldn’t do it. I figured they’d give
up, go back to their original books, and put Harry Potter away until
5th or 6th grade. Instead, they jumped right in and stuck to it. As a
result, they got excellent practice applying good reading strategies to
a challenging text for a few minutes every day. And I got a lesson in
how good books motivate kids to work harder than I ever thought
possible.

Normally, I can’t get very young readers to apply multiple strategies
to a challenging text. They get tired. They get bored. And eventually
they get frustrated. But when kids really want to read something, even
if that something is way above their grade level, I know now that there
are ways I can work with them to accommodate their preferences and
ensure they have an experience that will make them a better reader at
the same time.

I now use that same kind of deal making on a regular basis. Whenever
kids pick books that are too hard for them, I identify a strategy or
two they need to apply to overcome the gap between their ability and
the level of the text. As long as they continue to apply the
strategies, they can continue to read the book. If I’m thoughtful about
the strategies I choose, and if students use those strategies
conscientiously, the reading experience improves and the reader learns
new skills. If the reader can’t or won’t apply the strategies, they
agree to pick an easier book.

Most kids, when they pick books, make choices that are above their
reading level. And they often don’t like it when I ask them to pick
something easier. Now I’ve got an approach to mediating that situation
more effectively. I’ve also learned when I can let a kid go with a hard
book they really love.

I want kids to take risks with their learning. The best thing I think a
kid can do in school is volunteer for a challenge. While I don’t want
kids reading two or three years above their grade level all the time, I
do want them to pick a “challenge” book every once in a while. And when
that happens, I want to give each kid the exact set of tools he or she
needs to meet it. Striking a deal about using strategies to read
effectively in hard texts brings me and the students into an informal
learning contract that matches their motivation with my instructional
goals. I couldn’t ask for anything better that.

2 Comments

Steve makes some good points; kids do want to read the cool books they see their peers and siblings reading. They are also willing to suffer poor comprehension to do so. They see it as a viable trade-off for fitting in with their friends. Over the years I’ve struggled as I watched students who do this. But what to do? No one wants to discourage children from reading, abundant distractions from reading exist; piling on discouragement can be enough to send some kids running away from reading entirely.
Along with Steve's strategies, I'd like to add reading while listening as a strategy that can help students with tough texts. Students read their book while listening to a recorded version. Recorded versions of many popular texts are readily available, and teachers (or classroom volunteers) can make them with relative ease. Some schools already own books on tape or CD collections, but the technology afforded by iPod and MP3 players allows slowing and increasing the pace of the recording without voice distortion.
This year I had a group of students who selected Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume as their Literature Circle choice. At least a grade level above their reading level, I hesitantly submitted to their pleas. After all, some of their best friends had selected this as their first Literature Circle text, and they wanted to read about the antics of Fudge for themselves.
Dusting off my cassette recorder, and keeping my readers in mind, I set off to make the story accessible to my four struggling but motivated readers. Although this seems like extra work for me, in reality it only took a few minutes a day. I read slowly, carefully, and with expression. I paused slightly at words I knew they would find tricky. I signaled page changes with a chime, and made comments such as “This concludes chapter 3” at the end of each chapter. I recorded each chapter after they read, listened to, and discussed the previous chapter. I dutifully wrote the page range of each chapter associated with the tape number, so they could refer back to previous sections during their discussions, if needed.
Along with making the recordings, I sat in on each of their group’s meetings, keeping their pace slow enough to ensure comprehension, monitoring their vocabulary choices, and focusing on the kinds of questions they wrote for the group. While recording every book individual students want to read poses a significant challenge, this strategy worked in this situation.

Joy's approach of recording a text for a group of readers may not be practical for everyone in every situation, but it brings up a good point: being read to is a reasonable way to scaffold higher-level reading experiences.

Another way to approach Joy's excellent idea is to designate readers in the room. If the teacher doesn't have time to do the reading, why not have a higher-reading kid do it?

In the past, when I have had literature circle groups featuring kids of different ability levels, I have sometimes made the highest reader, for whom the book was fairly easy, into the discussion leader. One of the tasks of the discussion leader is reading parts of the book and making sure everyone else can follow along.

What I like most about this is that it turns students into teachers. Now, the higher kids get a task that challenges them while the lower kids get the support and scaffolding they need to be successful.

There's 25 of them and only one of us. I think that any time we can multiply ourselves in the room, we should give it a shot. I think, too, that letting higher kids take on a pseudo-instructional role is often the best way to challenge them.